We're in the Endgame Now! - A January 2020 Update
Happy New Year Wayward Guide-sters!
Much like the anticipated franchise conclusions of 2019 (Marvel's Avengers, Game of Thrones, Star Wars), 2020 will see the much anticipated release of Wayward Guide!! With a clear end date in sight, the remainder of this year has been pretty tightly scheduled to ensure we meet our delivery!
So, to give you a good idea of how we'll be devoting time to Wayward Guide work amidst our other projects over the first 6 months of the year (or Q1 & Q2 if you're business savvy!), here is our nifty Wayward Guide Working Calendar Through June:
January
VFX and Score Wrap-Up - This week, we will be receiving final renderings of a few visual effect sequences we have in the show. Once those are plugged into the episodes (as they affect the actual timing lock of the show), we can have Clark and Pierce adjust what they've composed for those moments and officially sign off on the show's score! We just did a watch-down of 8 of the 10 episodes the other night and the music they've written is absolutely lovely. It adds so much character to the world. But WHY were we doing a watch-down you might ask? Well that was to make sound notes for...
February
ADR Recording - With score and VFX locked, we can beginning polishing the sound design and scouring the show for any missing or poorly recorded dialogue. ADR, or Automated Dialogue Replacement, will entail us bringing back several actors into the sound studio to record anything from lines that clarify the narrative when characters are off-screen to lines that may been hard to hear or sounded bad. We also may need to record Walla, which is the imitation of a crowd murmuring in the background. This would help for several scenes where we want to fill out the audio landscape because we had to capture things cleanly and without noise during production. Luckily, after our watch-down, there's only a handful of people that we need to bring in!
March
Podcast Creative - With all THOSE elements completed, we can turn our attention to creative work on the podcast. Knowing that we'll be releasing the web-series weekly in 10 episodes (as originally conceived), we can now tailor the podcast to interlock with that in the way we intended. As we've said before, we were hesitant to begin this part of the process before now, should a distributor swoop in and change our plans for the film portion, requiring us to also redo the podcast. We'll be simultaneously mounting Kill Our Guest 2 this month; but the scripts for those shows will be completed before March, so we can focus creatively on the podcast. Our sound designers at Ears Up Design (who are also going to be producing our podcast) will be out of the country until the end of April, so this gives us ample time to dig into the specifics of how to bridge the first season of Wayward Guide with this companion podcast!
April
Opening Credits Sequence, Coloring, Sound Mastering - We'll likely be continuing some of our creative podcast sessions during April. But we'll also get the ball rolling on the final finishing elements for the show. Shooting the opening credits sequence (the concept for this is super fun, which we'll share at a later date), having a colorist do a pass on the series (remember those shots with and without the LUT from past updates? That's what this is!), and mixing/mastering all the sound design are parts of the process that can happen separately and simultaneously. And depending on scheduling, some of this may be happening throughout the summer! And that's A-OK!!
May
Podcast Production - Once Ears Up returns to the states, we'll dive into production on the podcast in May. Between studio time, recording on location, and scheduling all our actors to make (audio) appearances, this will probably be one of the the more time consuming elements left to complete. But without having to worry about costumes, sets, lighting, camera equipment, large crews, etc., recording the podcast will be FAR easier than shooting the film portion!
June
Rewards are Coming! - Again, some of the podcast production may bleed into this month. But after that, we are TRULY in the home stretch (Damn, feels like we've been saying that for years, huh?) and we at TCB can finally turn our attention to delivering your rewards!!! We've been brainstorming designs and the "mystery" elements and think you're gonna really dig the interactive elements we've come up with. And if all goes as planned, you should be receiving the first of your rewards by mid to end of June... just in time for a Wayward Guide announcement! :)
Obviously, each month we'll be giving you a deeper look into these stages! But we wanted to share the overall plan! And unless something changes drastically, we should pretty much be sticking to it. By fully committing to releasing this project under our terms, it's been far easier to lock this all in. Get pumped. We've got a cool year ahead!
Hugs and Kisses,
TCB
